


Summoning the Sorceress

by venefica_aura (crankyoldman)



Category: Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, Gift Fic, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/venefica_aura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time travel. Wings. Magic of the different kinds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summoning the Sorceress

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas fic for [](http://astralavator.livejournal.com/profile)[**astralavator**](http://astralavator.livejournal.com/) and very very fun to write. Yes, this clever girl GAVE me this plotbunny. &lt;3

Yuna had been out at sea when they met. The blue of their worlds was no different in either time and the young woman had seemed quite gleeful about this. The High Summoner had never seen a woman that looked quite like that before. Someone with dark features like Lulu but managed not to be dark herself. Like twilight.

The young woman's smile was all star shine, though. "So Ellone was right."

Yuna had been a High Summoner for years, but even then she hadn't quite reached thirty. It was a title that didn't even mean what it used to anymore. No one needed to banish the dead anymore. They did it on their own.

"Excuse me?"

She placed her hands on her slim hips. "Oh, that the sea doesn't change no matter what time you're in."

Yuna was lost. "Who are you exactly?"

The young woman seemed to be enjoying the breeze, having moved to the railing and looking out over the clear water. "Just a passing sorceress. You can call me Rinoa."

Nothing in the false teachings or the new teachings ever mentioned such a foreign word as _sorceress._ And the name Rinoa reminded her of the name of a rather strange bird in one of the island languages. An old word. Birds like that didn't have white wings, like the motif on the back of the blue thing that Rinoa wore.

"Can I ask why you're on my ship and how you got here?" Yuna was always careful to be a little polite to odd people. Even if she'd become a little more rebellious in recent years, after Tidus never turned up.

Rinoa tilted her head to the side and continued to take in the breeze. "I wanted to see the ocean from a long time ago. And how? Well."

"Well?"

"Imagine that you take something very impossible. Then you know someone that can do something that's a little less impossible. Then you make it more powerful because you're a legacy of old crazy lady magic. That's how."

Yuna didn't feel the need to ask for more. Clearly this woman was daft. And people didn't appear from Zanarkand anymore. Those dreams weren't real.

"So who are you?" Rinoa's mannerism for asking questions reminded her of her cousin, which was endearing in its own way. Nothing that reminded her of Rikku could truly be harmful.

"My name is Yuna. Sometimes people call me High Summoner Yuna, though it's more of a title than anything real."

It was mostly political, now. Part of her knew it was better to be a Summoner for the people in a world of life instead of death, but another part of her still missed being able to call on those wise and comforting aeons.

Rinoa seemed to consider the title for a moment, as if trying to recall some lesson. Then she smiled again. "So you're a necromancer?"

That caught Yuna off guard. She'd never heard of that before. "A what?"

"Well, you summon things, conjure them up. And I bet a lot of it had to do with... dead things? Like ghosts?"

Yuna hadn't ever thought of it that way. Summoning an aeon was like bringing back a ghost. And Sending... that went without saying. This young woman was odd, but not entirely without some kind of intelligence.

"I guess so..."

Rinoa laughed then. "So what would a necromancer need with those pretentious wings?"

Wings? Yuna turned around, even though she knew that she didn't have wings. Why would she have wings? She wasn't a bird. She was just a woman.

"What are you talking about."

Rinoa smiled the kind of smile that fit better on an older woman with longer hair that for some reason had entered Yuna's memory. Unbidden. She didn't think of her mother as often as her father. It saddened her.

"They're hard to see sometimes. Yours are blue, like the sea. It isn't shameful for them to not be white anymore. But they are embarrassingly elaborate."

She didn't talk much with the crazy woman after that. Rinoa seemed content to talk about the sun and the waves and flit about the deck like the bird that she reminded Yuna of. They dropped her off at Luca some time later, though Yuna herself did not get off the boat. She was spending less and less time there as the days went on.

Rinoa had surprised by hugging her, though, like a sister would.

"High Summoner, are we to continue on to Home?"

She was staring out into the waves, hoping the water would reflect something back. She couldn't help but think that maybe she'd felt feathers when the other woman had embraced her, in the kind of farewell that was more common before the Eternal Calm.

"Yes, of course. Thank you."

It was rather pretentious for a sorceress to have wings too.


End file.
